Tamriel Wolfsbaine

I am trying to figure out where the soul is for people in the cosmere. I don't know how much this truly has to be in the spoiler section but when I read Ranette and Wayne's conversation at the restaurant they talked about him being cut in half with a cannon ball and that he was lucky the metalminds were on the piece of him with his head.... Besides speaking alot to the power of gold feruchemy on its own, I thought this was interesting when I put it next to an assumption I always made with steel and iron. I thought steel and iron pushed from the center point of the soul... perhaps this is false and they simply push and pull from the source of metal and where it is being burnt. (In which case could you pierce your body to burn and push and pull from anywhere?) Is the brain driving the healing or is the soul? Are they located in the same spot? How does that fair with all other forms of healing? Did TLR ever really get decapitated? Obviously and neurons firing at all can allow a compounder to heal but would Miles have needed an earing to prevent decapitation from killing him?

Does Harmony choose not to control Koloss in era 2 or is there a reason he can't? He was happy to sieze control of bleeder when needed and the Set won't use too many spikes for fear of it suggesting he has done it vs them. But the Koloss are able to raid villeges in the roughs and he doesn't seem to care too much. Maybe I have forgotten something or am just overlooking something. When does a person enter into such a bad zone that Harmony decides to do away with your agency?

Technically if you are comparing iron and steel then the option is either a hemalurgist or a mistborn vs someone with gravitation. Which is worse I don't know? You certainly don't want to go down the rabbit hole of stacking powers back and forth. Gravitation vs just iron and steel is also not much of discussion because then it comes to having stormlight and all that that brings. I am convinced that stormlight with no surge access at all is still one of the best single abilities in the cosmere. Atium might be the only metal that beats it on its own in the allomancy world. I just don't know that someone with just gravitation would actually come out on top vs someone with access to both iron and steel. To assume a hemalurgist stopped at one spike for the fight and there is nothing else that the allomancer gets is kind of stacked one way. To assume they have more than 1 spike or are a mistborn basically stacks it the other way. If the option were given to me the gravitation surge vs iron and steel allomancy I would go with allomancy all day. Since even a single surge comes with perfected body and infinite healing you almost have to go with gravitation. Not because of gravitation but because stormlight is imba to the max. However I take mistborn over windrunner pretty much anyday. Even if they lose a 1v1. Way to much versatility in what you can do with the powerset.

Would lifts ability be useless without surges? Does lifelight heal / perfect you in similar ways to stormlight? Or would that be useless without being a radiant?

@Frustration What would you value Lifts boon of metabolizing food into lifelight at? Between that and Aetherbound a bendalloy compounder could open up some interesting options. I assume lifelight gives roughly the same benefits of stormlight but I could be wrong on that.

Dang it i totally did. Let me move it all.

The idea of having metalminds so crammed packed full of connection to shard X and then duralumin burning all of it at once is interesting. I imagine you are going to have an otherworldly experience for sure. I don't know if you would be able to hold onto any of that past those few seconds. Also who is to say how screwed up you will be in the long run after attempting it.

I would have swapped that first bit. I think gravitation is far more dangerous close range. I think steel and iron are best when used in the mid / longer ranges. Gravitation really needs to have the person using it touch the object they want to have impact on. Spells don't get closer range than touch. Steel and iron are great for misdirecting metal only.... but they can do it at a range. So long as the cosmere doesn't phase out metal for everything then steel and iron will have a place. Steel and iron take the advantage for being able to more finetune the effects they have on things (Kelsier spinning rods, Vin slautering 20 with a belt buckle never needing to touch or be touched by any of the people nor the buckle, Wax pushing on specific parts of a bullet...) An allomancer dropped into an army all wielding metal could clear a large path quickly... though pewter is almost certainly required or a form of healing. A gravitation user on their own would have a really really hard time clearing space in the middle of an army minus shards. I would actually say dropping a mistborn into the middle of an army could be more damaging to that armies forward progress than even a 4th heightening radiant. So long as that army is using metal weaponry the mistborn will be able to cause mass chaos. With access to era 2 metals you could easily drink more metals after a duralumin push using bendalloy and then playing again. I do think the radiant could cause mass disturbances in the form of tumbling boulders through enemy lines... and this could be done from a range with gravitation but like you said, once its gone its gone. Steel and iron offer much more fine control when being used at a range on the world around them. Transporting allies in mass goes to gravitation hands down. Allomancy is a selfish magic system. Flying top speeds are the gravitation users. I would say steel and iron will always eccelerate you faster and I think, when in the setting appropriate with metal around you, I think mistborn may have an advantage in quick changes of direction and motion. If the anchors allow it mistborn maneuverability is among the best in the cosmere. And you don't have to come up to speed at a rate of falling based on your lashings. Steel just goes like being shot from a gun.

I feel like connection is going to creep more into where I thought investiture was going to be. But as tech improves we will see people gaining powers through more and more convoluted ways. The cosmere will quickly be supersaturated with powered individuals and the arms race will be far more than just tech of any kind. Edit: not sure if that needs spoilers or not since it's from elsewhere in cosmere to present.

Do you think this is going to make it impossible to use medallion tech to collect perminent abilities given the protagonist potentially being a nicroburst for era 3? Can a nicrosil compounder store what is in a medallion or does the medallion not work on the spiritweb more like the honorblades than a hemalurgic spike?

Ah. Connection issue not the investiture. I thought that nicrosil just stored the ability to use X Y or Z.

I think a nicrosil ferring could even steal and store surges from honorblades if they had a second to touch it. Compound it from there for infinite use of the surges. Nicrosil compounding could likely be the easiest route to holding all 10 surges. You could spike yourself one spike at a time and compound yourself to being a fullborn... if you get a spike with a divine breath you could store that and keep it for yourself as well. Nicrosil is going to be super busted once people become more cosmere aware.

I have had the impression that Bleeders feats of speed could easily be explained by this. At the end of the book when she suddenly is a coin shot as well people have thought she was potentially changing spikes at the end. I feel like she could have been a coin shot and simply burning metalminds previously made or keyed to a persons identity she may have had a spike from. Even if she had a spike for both steel A and F she couldn't have ever compounded without turning herself over to harmony. Doing a swap to store steel speed and then swapping back for allomamcy she would have been able to burn the speed. I also think the single most important part of this strat is size of the metalmind. Metal only burns so fast. Even flared. If you don't have densely packed attribute into the smallest metalminds possible for that amount of attribute your alomancy won't feel like supercharged anything. A minute of double speed in a metalmind that takes you 2 hours to burn isn't going to offer you a ton. 2 hours of double speed in a metalmind that is small enough to burn in 1 minute is going to be physically dangerous to anyone using it. This all plays off of the idea that burning it will give you 10x the attribute back.

I can sympathize with the bias towards allomancy. Gravitation is just a different beast from a different reality. They both have awesome showings in the books. Szeth running on the walls and ceilings cutting people down and ripping off a chunk of wall to kill that guy was epic. Steel and iron alone would never be able to rip off the balcony or touch an enemy and send them flying upwards to have them land in a heap a few moments later. Obviously gravitation flying is awesome. So much more height and potential speed. Plus all of the bonuses of having stormlight to heal you when a bug smashes in the case of a chicken strike haha. Steel and iron have the benefit of being truly ranged. Vin used a beltbuckle to kill 20 men and never had to be within melee range. Steel and iron can break ranks of enemy soldiers from range so long as they use metal weapons. In vs it is near useless because shards are immune to pushes and pulls but where the radiants have to touch the enemy ranks to throw them back or pull all arrows towards a single location... Vin would have singlehandedly pushed all the arrows back into the parshendi on the bridge runs... I genuinely think both magics have their place in the cosmere and I genuinely think both planets have countless examples of where the other would have been helpful beyond measure during key battles. If I were a radiant fighting the fused I think I would be just as pleased to have a mistborn beside me as Vin would have been to have a windrunner drop down in the middle of fighting Ruin.

I am with you on this. Pewter allomancy being a close close second. In game terms the MAG turns your dice rolls into a game of yahtzee where you get to reroll your dice pretty well every roll of the entire game. In universe I am sure the spideysense is more applicable. But what actually convinced me on this was when my kid had me read Alcatraz and I fell in love with the "arriving late to things" talent. It would be more of a flavor thing. But how dope to think if you just follow your gut and stutter this step or that step you can be dodging bullets. The fact that you have all of the other feruchemical traits stored away only makes it better. You would be getting feelings of when you need to actively be tapping certain things for everything to go your way in a sense and it would just make everything you do so much more efficient because your gut is never wrong. Then you toss on that leeching and feeling when and who to use it on. Awesome combo.

So using Aetherbound powers is not the same rate as spores that are ingested? Or you simply have more control over it and given the moisture a person has available they can do more or less? Imagining an aetherbound with access to double bendalloy and compounder levels of hydration at their fingertips. Do you think it is out of the realm of possibility to see a roseite aetherbound creating weapons and shields in real time at a rate similar to spren blades?

Honestly we are both talking in circles. You think that you can reverse lash the coin to the shield and then cut the lashing all before the mistborn can use steel to continue jamming that coin onto the shield for a push. I don't even care if you let down the lashing once the coin touches the shield the mistborn has the option to shove off of it and recreate the distance that the windrunner is trying to close. If they needed to they could continue pushing on that same coin and it is going to stay attached to the shield until it slides off. Just like if I take my thumb and push it into a wall. That coin will stay there until I remove my thumb regardless of whether there is a lashing holding it there for me. It would be less efficient to have to hold the coin there via steel but it doesn't change the fact that the shield becomes an anchor point for the mistborn to hold that gap so long as the radiant keeps the shield up to block other incoming coins. Not that the argument over wooden shields being viable applies to a fight in a field between a radiant and his shardblade vs a mistborn with coin pouch as was outlined. If we get to choose loadouts based on what is available the era 1 mistborn gets atium and the era 2 mistborn gets guns and medallions and such. The radiant has access to fabrials and we fall down this wild spiraling hellscape of adding on more and more until you reach radiant with access to all surges and unbound bondsmith with 3 perpendicularities flanking his every move vs fullborn sucking in the mists and chilling with a well of Ascension juice box flinging aluminum spikes as weapons while running mach 10. Haha. I genuinely enjoy these topics but I am too distracted by life to draw accurate pictures with my words. I'm not saying the reverse lashing has to hold the coin there. I'm just saying once the lashing pulls the coin off course to the radiant the mistborn can still push against it into the shield to keep space. So long as the radiant holds a flat piece of anything forward and a piece of metal is touching it it is an anchor that the mistborn can use to keep the gap with. Once the coin falls you are correct it isn't an anchor anymore. That coin doesn't disappear. It is still in play as are any other coins the mistborn has access to. And then we play ring around the rosey some more. Windrunner tries to close the gap. Mistborn uses ranged attacks. Windrunner either face tanks them or uses a shield that they didn't have as part of their loadout (or uses their spren to block but once its dropped they still have a coin being pressed against them). This isn't to say there aren't angles and ricochets that can change that. But the argument put forth was that all coins are pretty well trivial as they will always be reverse lashed to the radiant. My counter was that it becomes a stalemate to which you said the radiant would just return all of his breath to the spheres. That led me to say that if the radiant gives up and leaves the mistborn can play the assassination game while radiant is not holding light. To which you answered that the fight wasn't going to be over like that. How on earth we got here I don't know. I'm not particularly enjoying the conversation anymore as there is really no end. And arguing literally anything and the answer being "because stormlight op" is exhausting. We can leave it as the mistborn keeps distance infinitely but the windrunner never runs out of stormlight because the investiture usage is so low for simple lashings and once the steel is empty the windrunner wins by default because magic sword and infinite healing. This is simply because we don't have numbers. We have WoB that explains every fight is written with the winner being who needs to be and then the calculations of how much investiture that character needed to do it all gets tossed in by an assistant and it becomes so. The same thing happens with these threads unfortunately. And I realize I am as guilty as any. Of course I want to envision a world where the mistborn stands a chance. I have consistently tipped my ranking in favor of the windrunner. Most of my participation in the thread is simply to offer different tactics that could or could not work to talk them through. Consistently the response is stormlight and shardblade win. Not much talking around the new scenario just brute strength of the power difference between investiture levels. But don't talk about atium because its banned in this scenario. Until we have the numbers and see it all we have is the tricks and usage of magic systems we see. If stormlight passively defeats the entire toolkit of more versatile systems then every discussion can only ever come down to that. Its sort of a shame really.

How fast can you make roseite grow as an aetherbound? Does faster growth rate cost more water based on the speed? To grow a cover over your arm/ hand how quickly do you think it could be done?

I actually think awakening is one of the better magics in this conflict. We see the command for 1 breath lifeless gives said lifeless a ton of freedom to function nearly as well as they did in life. Every Earthling soldier that gets turned lifeless becomes a soldier who feels no pain and needs to be bled out over and over again. Basically the zombies we all fear minus the whole 1 shot to the head thing... no you have to bleed them out to stop them and then they can be patched back up and filled with more ichor alcohol. Every military death we take is 1 more minion for those we are fighting. 1 lost battle and you have the enemy with lifeless who have the muscle memory to operate whatever tech is left behind. Its not radiants picking up guns... its soldiers who know how to use them picking them up but now they are harder to kill and stop permanently.

I kind of think squires may be a nuesence but not something the skybreaker should have to worry about. If anything they are more sacks of gems for him to refuel from as he cuts them all down. They have no shards and he is wearing plate. Windrunners dont have much in terms of offensive surges either. It would be like a few flies trying to annoy a bear as it is fighting another bear hoping to swing the odds. It would be exciting if division can cause small explosions. I would hate division to be limited to sith lighting... I think of dividing things as being quite a bit more than just lightning and fire. Depending on what it can do your division could be more devestating than your shardblade. I wouldnt be shocked if division is usable at a range to some extent or another. I think the biggest factor for the skybreaker is that they can use their shard for defense only in the form of a shield while landing touch hits with division... perhaps being able to target the windrunners stormlight reserves specifically. Having a shield and a touch weapon swings the fight more than just about anything else. Every touch you land on your opponents living plate while absorbing their hit on your sprenblade/shield/whatever is an advantage. Advantages add up fast.

I accept this. Ashby is speaking specifically about archery and achieving full pass throughs... lighter arrows with the same broadheads traveling slightly faster get less passthroughs than heavier arrows going slower. You can call it what you want and math it how you want but the entire viability of trad bow hunting and dangerous game bow hunting is built on big heavy sharp arrows going slightly slower than lighter sharp arrows going faster. Speed holds more weight in calculations for KE but mass holds more weight in momentum calculations. The results speak for themselves when you build your arrows right. That isnt to say fast light arrows dont kill a bunch of animals but your fast light arrow isn't going to blow through the scapula of that big game the way a heavier and slower arrow will. Mostly because the speed and size in hunting don't change together at the same pace. I also totally get that we aren't talking about sharp pointy objects here either. A coin slapping something flatside is going to penetrate less than the same coin going at the same speed hitting that thing on the skinny side. Rocks have no flat or skinny side. If you are going to drop a rock that weighs 1 oz with 30 lashings a rock dropped at 2oz would do more with slightly less lashings. Falling is still just falling. A rock in my hand doesn't really care about the gravity that is effecting it as I am not letting it fall. But if I am holding onto an arrow point and someone releases the string my hand is going to care. That is the difference between gravitation and steel/iron. You would have to dump so many lashing into a rock to make it be effective in shorter ranges that I dont think it would be much worth it. I won't try to argue the math because I am obviously not a physicist. I just see what happens to the bodies after the physics have done their thing. I disagree if the object is to get away from the radiant. Dropping coins and fleeing while the radiant is flying is futile. You are arcing every jump and not being efficient in your retreat. Steel is a straight line. When a radiant is carrying a shield to block your coins then you have an anchor that is attached to the advancing radiant. You push against that and the radiant never touches you as you are using all of their speed as well in a nice straight line. Like 2 magnets repelling eachother they wont ever hit you so long as their strategy is to use a shield to reverse lash and catch the coins. I guess my point of rocks vs coins goes back to the fight being placed in an open field where the mistborn specifically was given coins and then told that there were no other sources of metal around. I don't much care if the radiant bends down and picks up rocks but there is a lot more evidence that a mistborn in era 2 times would be using firearms than there is of a radiant carrying rocks on their person for the sole purpose of having projectiles. Being true to the thread the mistborn has a coin pouch and the radiant has their spren as weapons. I actually agree with this pretty much 100%. That is my reasoning for saying the mistborn would be far better off with a bag full of dense ball bearings. Some 50 cal lead shot would be far superior weapon to a penny... I would say a 50 cal lead shot would be far superior to an equally heavy stone of any shape... as that density is going to make a huge difference when moving through things. Comparing shotgun shot differences illustrates the whole thing perfectly. Dont take number 8 bird shot to kill a grizzly. Take that slug or some 00 buck for it. Heck... skip the 00 and just hit it with the slug.

To be fair this is very specifically a gravitation thing. They were limit testing partial lashing. There comes a point where just flying is faster than a foot race... in both magic systems. The math puts pewter in the 25-30mph range for extended periods of time (until the run out of pewter) which is significantly higher than the average world stage 100meter dashes at 19-20 mph. That is without the aid of using their flying powers to help. Pure pewter. I wasnt really using that example to show how far she could fall. Mostly discussing her vertical jump potential on pewter alone and the fact that pewter puts her into cat mode. If given a single coin Vin could fall from any height and be fine... and as Miles / the radiants show us healing can rebuild your legs as fast as you can fall. I think you miss the point. I wasnt saying use it to push the radiant back. You can use it to push yourself away from the radiant. It doesn't matter which person goes which direction for the fact to stand that absorbing a coin shot to the shield opens distance and helps reset for the mistborn. And if the radiant comes at an angle with which the mistborn can no longer move then the mistborn on pewter becomes the anchor and the radiant gets moved. My whole point with that is that a shield to absorb the coin is a gap opener for the mistborn. The mistborn will have that anchor or they will have the coin. If it ends up behind the radiant then the radiant gets it ripped through them. This is the entire point of the Ashby papers. Momentum gives you more pass throughs on larger targets than kinetic energy alone. The lighter projectile is going to be more prone to the air resistance (I guess this is more a density thing than weight alone) and it is going to slow down drastically faster once it meets other resistance... like hitting a person. The 2 magics work drastically different than each other. Distance is a huge factor here as well. It will be easier to aim in closer quarters for each but for the mistborn the nature of pushing means faster and more force earlier on. The rock actually continues to fall until the stormlight is gone. (Is that based on how much stormlight you put on it? If mass determines the amount of stormlight needed does that mean the rock would fall for less time before normal gravity works on it?) The rock gets to continue its momentum until that time and once it hits its terminal velocity (whatever that may be) it will be capped in whatever damage that rock will do. But the damage dealt by the rock is only going to ramp up over distance. The mistborn is the opposite in that. Playing at closer ranges the mistborn is going to have more force with each ranged attack than the radiant will at a closer range. Just outside of spear range is where the mistborn will be the most dangerous. I think they have all the means to stay there if the radiant uses a shield to stop coins. If the radiant throws rocks the mistborn is actually going to fair better in that range because the rock can only fall as hard as it can fall for the lashings it is given. If the mistborn is just out of spear range how much energy do you think a rock can land with? It's never being propelled its always just being pulled down by whatever the gravity is. There is also the need for the radiant to take the time to be gathering the rocks. (Can a radiant use gravitation through their feet? We see them all reach out and touch to use gravitation but I assume they could probably fudge some rules and go to battle barefoot.) Those weren't really instances where they were aiming for speed. Kaladin and the kick is the only one you mention here where it wasnt gravity being increased to break structures free of themselves. A couch sized stone from the wall is going to be just as effective no matter the speed. Szeth was trying to overcome the friction between the stone surfaces. All of these instances are using heavy objects and momentum to do what they need. I agree a nice dense piece of stone would move at a fair clip. There is a point where the air resistance is too much.

Just found this.... THE NUMBERS EXIST... we just can't have them.

This was, I believe, in testing what partial lashings could do to improve performance which in the case of this battle there are no surge uses. Yeah choosing to face tank a hit to trade is worth it. You run into the same issues as with fencing in the modern world. It would be like putting the olympic gold fencer against a high school fencer. Olympic gold can get 2 or 3 hits on the high schooler and none of the hits award a point so long as the high schooler scores a single midline hit on the gold medalist. Just face tank the hit and land your own. The magic sword is the deciding factor in that most times. I found a couple of WoBs on this. So I guess I have to concied a bit there. You are right about Vins size helping in some things with pewter and hurting in others. I dont know, then, if Vins jump makes her an outlier because she is stronger with pewter or because she is smaller. It is really difficult to say either way what about her makes her an outlier. Would it make a difference in the matchup if this was lerasium levels pewterarm? Or same conclusions. Shards just amplify healing ability to the tipping point each time? I think shards aside pewter comes out on top every time. Shards included the question is more how much stormlight does healing use up? As for plot armor and stormlight usage (this is not the only post you will see this quote in because I think it is hilarious...

Honestly we agree a lot more on radiants win con than we disagree on other things. So long as Brandon doesnt perish tragically before we get answers we will eventually get answers. So many of his WoBs talk about running the numbers... I wish he would release his forumlas if only to placate my mind for it. I dont even have time for games anymore in my life but I asked my wife for all the MAG books just so I could have a system of formulas to run off of... it may not be cannon WoB level stuff but dang it I want to math out the fights!!